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Night City is in for some big changes.
CDPR has announced and detailed a major new patch for Cyberpunk 2077 that has gone live, and the studio has clearly been hard at work on this one. The list of fixes, tweaks and additions are enormous, and cover everything from AI behaviour to re-balancing skills, adding new elements to the world, and pretty much overhauling the driving model. Night City is about to go through some big changes.
Perhaps the most significant are those that CDPR groups under ‘Living City’, because there’s an truckload of improvements to enemy and NPC AI. The patch notes basically list fixes for everything that non-player characters ever do in the game. The following is a partial list taken from the full patch notes, and there are improvements to:
«Taking cover, positioning, reloading, equipping weapons, dodging, blocking and many others […] hit reactions and death animations […] Enemies are now much better at blocking and evading (Kerenzikov) attacks […] Further diversification of melee and ranged combat behaviors for different factions: reckless, aggressive, balanced, defensive and cautious […] Followers now contribute more in combat […] Numerous fixes and balance changes to netrunner combat.»
On a more macro level there are also changes to how crowds react, with certain NPCs now willing to get aggressive if you’re out of line, and generally improved reactions to the player, better pathfinding, and (hopefully) less obvious de-spawning. This applies to NPC vehicles also, which as well as receiving visual improvements on their turning and general movement within traffic, will now react to danger, or being bumped into, and NPC passengers can now die in car crashes. And if you’re being chased by the cops, you can opt to hide-out in the area they’re looking (previously you just had to put distance between them and you).
On which note the game’s driving model has a raft of improvements across-the-board, including a more in-depth clutch and gearbox simulation, as well as a new ‘Burn Out Mode’ that builds on the way you could pull donuts. «The old system only allowed rotating on the spot, now try modulating the inputs to see what you can do! Try brake stands, donuts, drifts or heat up the tires to do a drag-race style launch with a High Grip boost.» So essentially you can now take corners at high speeds and drift around them like a king.
Alongside these improvements, a there are changes to the open world ‘fixer’ quests. «V now has standing with fixers throughout Night City. New fixer gigs will appear gradually in sets as your standing increases, and a fixer will offer you another set of gigs only after the previous set is completed in a given district. Completing all the gigs for a fixer will earn you a special reward (excluding Mr. Hands—sorry, he just doesn’t like you, choom.)»
There are a great many fixes to individual quests as well as some that have been added-to. Most notably, the romances with Panam, Kerry, River and Judy have been given a pass and now feature new messages and interactions. There are also «new interactions in the homes of love interests, including sleeping in bed with a given partner.» As Keanu himself said, it’s always nice when it’s nice.
Need a TL:DR for #Cyberpunk2077 Patch 1.5/Next-Gen Update? Here you go, chooms: pic.twitter.com/ToCwylbNbpFebruary 15, 2022
You can now rent four additional apartments by going to them or using the in-game EZEstates website. This option is unlocked after completing the Playing for Time quest, and amusingly enough «it’s possible to rent all apartments at the same time.» Landlord of Night City! All your apartments will share the same stash, and there’s also now an option to customise V’s existing apartment.
As well as the interior decor, you can also now tweak certain features of your appearance at the mirrors in apartments and safehouses: Hair, makeup, piercings and so on. There are also additional options in the character creator.
There are a bunch of new weapons and attachments, new poses in photo mode (including some for Johnny Silverhand), economy related changes (increased rewards from quests, decreased prices for goodies), a rebalance of clothing mods, tweaks to make the ‘Easy’ difficulty a little more challenging, and the introduction of two new stats for V.
This last change goes alongside a re-balancing of the perks system and a slight shuffling of the skill tree: Meaning all players basically get a free character re-spec, because the patch will reset all skill points.
A UI overhaul sees improvements to map readability and functionality, as well as various new interfaces for things like the ‘skip time’ option, and improvements across notifications and pop-ups. There are also some PC-specific additions:
This patch is gargantuan, so we’ll end on a few of the more random additions: V can now smash bodily through glass that has been fractured; Throwing knives are no longer lost after each throw, but return on a cooldown; Players can reject non-essential holocalls and mute the NCPD dispatcher; «Drastically reduced the amount of loot lying around as a part of an effort to allow players more breathing room to experience quest scenes and the world itself» and, finally, «Added a few secrets in Night City to be discovered by players.»
The patch came in for me at 47.09GB in size. The full notes can be read here.
Rich is a games journalist with 15 years’ experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as «[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike.»
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